, come down to two things. One is their weak claim that a lightning process to swap land out of the Greenbelt was necessary to meet housing needs. The other is that Mr. Amato kept them in the dark – and they didn’t know he had hijacked the review of Greenbelt land swaps from civil servants, and provided preferential treatment to developers who handed him packages about the land they wanted removed.
According to the Auditor-General’s report, the deputy minister – the top civil servant in the Ministry of Housing – thought Mr. Amato was acting on the minister’s instructions. That wasn’t, as Mr. Ford suggested, just a bad process that has to be corrected for the next time. Ms. Lysyk rang an alarm bell that should have him calling in investigators. And firing the minister.